She named the boy Ichabod, saying, “The Glory has departed from Israel”—because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband. – 1 Samuel 4:21

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 13, 2016): 1 Samuel 4

Major General William Tecumseh Sherman once wrote that he was “tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.” Sherman distinguished himself as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War serving under Ulysses S. Grant. He has been honored for his tactics during the war, and criticized for the scorched earth campaign that he waged against the South as the horrors and tedium of war progressed. But he seemed to understand the truth of war. There is no glory. And what glory we might see from the outside disappears once you get closer to the fight. It is moonshine that can never be grasped and disappears quickly in the presence of a greater light. Those who desire war have never experienced it, or have been deceived into believing that some alternate reality exists that makes war seem important.

The wife of Phinehas gives birth just as the news that her husband and her father-in-law, Eli, have died. Her husband died in the rout of the army of Israel by the Philistines, and Eli at the age of 98, dies when he receives the news of the defeat of Israel, the death of his sons, and the loss of the Ark of the Covenant. Suddenly she is alone with a child. And the name that she gives to this new life that she has been blessed with is Ichabod. The Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest extant Greek manuscripts of the Bible, lists the child’s name as ouai barchaboth – which is literally translated “No son of Glory.” Sherman would not have been surprised. There can be no glory in war.

Sometimes I have to admit that I don’t think we really understand that. Maybe that is partially why it is the young that seem to run towards war. Their hope is that in the fight they will find the glory that they believe that their lives deserve. But their disappointment is that there is no glory, no remembrance exists in the midst of the fight. Only pain and suffering and great fear as life passes from them – and they wonder if the reason for the fight was enough to demand such a supreme sacrifice from them.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 5